Advances in mobile and communication technologies have created tremendous opportunities, one of which is providing users of mobile computing devices an ability to initiate payment transactions using their mobile device. One approach to enable mobile devices to conduct payment transactions is through the use of near field communication (NFC) technology to securely transmit payment information to a contactless terminal. To enable this, mobile phones with a hardware-implemented secure element (e.g., a secure element chip) can be used to securely store payment account credentials, such as credit card credentials, have been used. Generally only certain authorized applications or services are given access to data in the secure element (SE), and there are multiple levels of protection for data stored on the secure element. In this way the SE is protected at the hardware level from tampering or hacking.
Data stored in traditional storage media such as device memory, subscriber identity/identification modules (SIM cards), secure digital (SD) cards, and universal serial bus (USB) tokens/flash memory drives installed in or connected to mobile devices can be encrypted or otherwise secured. However, unlike an SE, which is embedded in and tied to a specific mobile device, other storage media can be transferred from one mobile device to another device. As a result, the security levels afforded by using such storage media may not be sufficient to securely store payment account credentials or otherwise support payment transactions.
To resolve these issues, mobile devices configured to operate with a PayPass® chip have been proposed. However, users of mobile phones often have multiple payment accounts. Additionally, not all issuers, acquirers or merchants have host systems that can process chip data elements from certain hardware chips. As a result, a user who has an NFC-capable mobile device may not be able to use it as a payment device if their mobile device's secure element (SE) hardware chip is not compatible with a payment processing system or merchant terminal. Also, ownership of these hardware SEs can be a contentious obstacle to mass commercialization of NFC payment technology. For example, some SE chips are owned by mobile network operators (MNOs) or telecommunications companies (telcos), others by mobile phone handset makers, and still others may be owned by banks or financial institutions. Further complicating existing systems is the fact that some MNOs and telcos favor SIM modules as opposed to embedded SEs in mobile phones on their network.
Accordingly, what is needed are systems and methods that use an open scheme which enables allocation of multiple virtual SEs in the same physical chip of a mobile phone.
On a different note, some existing smart card services are offered via the GlobalPlatform (GP), wherein the service offerings adhere to GP specifications and standards. GP is a cross industry, not-for-profit association which identifies, develops and publishes specifications which facilitate the secure and interoperable deployment and management of multiple embedded applications on secure chip technology.
In the context of the GP platform and specifications, the term ‘secure chip’ refers to embedded technologies used in various hardware elements and chips, such as, but not limited to, smart cards, application processors, SD cards, USB tokens and secure elements (hardware SEs) for protecting assets (data, keys and applications) from physical or software attacks.
Traditional mobile payment systems require complex interactions with SE suppliers/providers, handset makers, and trusted service managers (TSMs) of multiple mobile network operators (MNOs) in order to generate keys and complete transactions.
Accordingly, what is further needed are systems and methods that provide technical solutions that provide multiple virtual SEs in a single hardware SE resident in a mobile device without significantly increasing the complexity of mobile payment systems.
Processing contactless and mobile payments using traditional payment accounts often requires multiple phone-based electronic wallets capable of providing authenticated transactions across multiple channels of commerce to be installed on a mobile device. These multiple electronic wallets may in turn require separate, local, secure (i.e., encrypted) storage on the mobile device (i.e., in a SIM card or SE chip on the device. Besides the complexities and burdens inherent in provisioning, activating and maintaining multiple, often divergent electronic wallets on mobile devices, the fact that such devices typically only contain a single secure storage device (i.e., one SIM card or SE chip) may prevent users from using multiple payment accounts to make mobile payments.
Accordingly, what is further needed are systems and methods that allow mobile devices with a single hardware SE chip to use multiple, virtual SEs within the hardware SE to complete mobile payments using one or more existing payment accounts, such as, but not limited to, a PayPass® account, so that the user can conduct PayPass® transactions at PayPass®-enabled merchants with a mobile device without having to use an SE and without requiring their acquirer or merchant to make significant changes to their host system(s).